Sorry to drag you to the San Francisco DMV when your license isn’t expiring, but that’s the Edenic setting for this tale. Once upon a time (a few weeks ago), a Baker Street resident encountered a clippers-wielding stranger trimming the large and gnarled jade plants in front of her house. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Those are my plants.”

“They are overgrown,” he said. “I live nearby, and I am an arborist. I am taking the cut-off pieces and planting them at the side of the DMV,” just across Oak Street. He pointed to a shopping bag he’d been filling with the cut-off branches.

The woman thought for a bit. The plantings in the DMV lot are neglected; the shrubbery outside was a mess, and the closest corner was pretty much a triangular patch of dirt with a backdrop of chain-link fence. Why not help in its beautification? “OK,” she said, pointing to a part of the jade that was drooping with its own weight. “Trim away.”

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The bedraggled southeast corner of the DMV site was on her path to the grocery store. Over the next few weeks, she watched as the man turned it into a garden. Several times, she saw him working there; once she saw him headed to the site, dragging a bucket of water. Mostly, she’d come home from work to see the results of his endeavors.

He added the jade, other succulents, poppies and nasturtium; he wired painted bicycle gears to the ugly chain-link fence that surrounded the lot, and stood broken pieces of pottery in the soil to add color accents. He made a brick pathway across one corner of the triangle, placed a bowling pin on a stand warning “Only pinheads steal,” and hung a Chinese red lantern that identified the site as “Baker/Oak Poppy Garden.”

The woman read a story about the garden on Hoodline, in which the man, who identified himself as Brian Poppyseed, said some neighbors had even let them use their jade plants. Efforts to reach the gardener were futile. There was no Poppyseed in the white pages or voters’ registry.

Sometime around July 4, the Poppy Garden at Baker and Oak disappeared. The gears were removed from the fence, the plants were gone, the dirt was bare. But one by one, the sidewalk basins around the three or so trees on Oak Street were planted with remnants of the garden that had been on the corner.

Poppyseed told Hoodline he’d been informed by the DMV branch manager that she had forwarded pictures of the unauthorized garden to DMV authorities and that the garden would have to be removed. Getting her side of the story has proved difficult; local DMV numbers don’t pop up in searches, and the central number in Sacramento said that the call might be returned in 1½ hours, or the caller might be on hold that long.

Jessica Gonzalez, assistant deputy director of public affairs at DMV headquarters in Sacramento, didn’t know anything about the branch manager’s warning, but said, “As far we know, none of the plants were removed or taken by our landscapers.” (The presence of “landscapers” on the property at any time would be pretty much a surprise to anyone who has ever cast eyes upon it.)

“This is the first time I’ve ever had media contact me about a garden being put on our property, and we have 178 field offices,” said Gonzalez. “We try to keep the landscaping looking nice,” emphasizing the DMV’s commitment to drought-tolerant plants. But before Poppyseed started work, the triangular patch was a garden of discarded plastic bags, paper cups and bent hangers. Perhaps those are drought-tolerant elements, too.

Poppyseed “didn’t have permission to use the property,” said Gonzalez. “At this time, we are looking at the property and deciding what to do.” She said she would check with the branch chief, who’s sometimes hard to reach. “She could be in meetings.” At the time of this writing, she had yet to call back.

As to the mini-gardens around the trees, Gonzalez said the basins aren’t DMV property. As long as the gardens aren’t obstructing sidewalks, said Rachel Gordon of the Department of Public Works, “we welcome the beautification. We like greenery.”